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“The bairns are seen to,” Evander told Callum. “A woman named Brigid has milk to spare. See that she gets extra rations while she’s feeding three.”

“Of course, me Laird.” Callum nodded. “I heard that her own lad’s almost one year old now, and she was very willing to help ye, is that right?”

“Aye, we didnae even have to tell her twice.”

“It shows how much ye mean to the people here, me Laird.”

Evander didn’t reply anything. He wasn’t going to argue with Callum about how the people here looked up to him. He had stumbled into being a laird. Everyone had voted him as best to lead. A position he still wasn’t sure of.

Now Jack was here, expecting him to take up his father’s—most recently his brother’s—mantle.

Jack wasn’t happy about it; that much was clear. Had anyone else been fit for the role, he would’ve passed over Evander without a second thought. But the problem was, there was no one else. Evander was the only man of age left in his father’s line.

That solved one problem, at least, out of the great tangle that had landed on him since yesterday. The rest were still waiting, and none of them would solve themselves simply because he wished it.

He called his men together at first light, all of them, every face he’d led out of a dozen battlefields and into this half-formed thing they were still learning to call a clan rather than an army with nowhere left to march.

He laid it before them plainly, the way he’d have wanted it laid before himself had their positions been reversed—the dead father, the dead brother, the empty village, the offer of a name he’d spent twelve years trying to forget he’d ever carried.

Silence met him first. Then muttering. Then, from somewhere near the back, a single voice, rough with sleep and old grievance.

He wanted to get their opinions. They were the ones who had agreed to follow him, so they deserved the truth and a chance to speak about the situation he had never thought he’d find himself in.

“We daenae need them,” one of the men declared.

There was a rumble of agreement that surprised Evander with its speed, faster than he’d have predicted for men who’d spent so long distrusting anything that smelled of a laird’s hall.

“But the village stands ready. Roofs already built, hearths already laid, and no soul left to argue that we’ve no right to them. I think, after everything we’ve survived together, we’ve earned that much ease.”

More voices joined, tired voices, men who had slept under canvas through one too many winters and buried too many friends to have any taste left for pride or old scores.

One by one, they nodded, or grunted their agreement, or looked at him in a way that told him the decision had already been made somewhere he hadn’t been.

Callum caught his eye and gave the smallest shrug, as if to say, There’s yer answer.

Evander shot him a look.

Callum raised his eyebrows and stared back, an expression that said, Daenae kill the messenger.

Evander scowled and turned back toward the men. He had never imagined that he would find himself in this position, let alone going back to the very place he had left behind twelve years ago. And yet that was exactly what he was about to do.

It made sense. They were traveling across the Highlands, looking for a place to settle. MacArthur Castle and the surrounding lands would give them a permanent home. There would be struggles, yes, but not the ones they were dealing with right now.

“Then we travel,” Evander decided. The words felt heavier in his mouth than he’d expected, a door closing on one life and opening onto another he wasn’t certain he was ready for. “Today.”

The cheers must have nearly startled the babies awake, rippling through the camp like a wave. Evander stood in the middle of it, feeling, for the first time in longer than he could remember, entirely unmoored from the man he’d grown into.

Callum came to stand beside him as the men began breaking camp in earnest, ropes and canvas coming down all around them. “Ye look like a man walking to his own hanging, me Laird, nae his own homecoming.”

“It doesnae feel much different,” Evander admitted.

For once, Callum didn’t laugh.

Evander’s gaze slid back to the tent, where Freya sat with the twins, and something hard flickered across his face before he smoothed it away. “Me own faither banished me, and now I am about to waltz back in as if nothing happened.”

“It will feel different, me Laird. Ye have to give it a chance and accept that circumstances are much different than they were when ye fled twelve years ago.” Callum clapped him once on the shoulder, before moving off to see to the horses, leaving him alone with the sound of two hundred people preparing to stop running.